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Livestream: Elon Musk's Red Tesla Roadster In Space

I don't know how long this footage is going to be streamed, but if you want to see (a decisively non-flat) Planet Earth in high definition from within the cabin of an electric roadster floating through space, then now is the time.

How was this managed, and how fast was it travelling? And is the figure sitting in the one position real and alive?

Well, I haven't exactly followed the launch, but as I understand it, SpaceX used its brand-new heavy booster rocket to launch this thing into space. I'm not sure why, but apparently there were two such boosters launched, and both of them were landed on Earth again simultaneously in a perfect maneuver afterwards. This heavy booster is SpaceX's new rocket design, intended to be able to carry a heavy load to Mars.

The figurine inside the car is of course not a human being. It's a dummy they've baptized Starman. There are cameras mounted on steel arms all around the vehicle, so that you get a view from all angles. They should have called the dummy "The Stig's interplanetary cousin."

I don't know how fast it is traveling, but I would presume an approximate speed between 27'000 and 45'000 km/h, which is the standard speed that the Space Shuttle used for orbital flight. It obviously also rotates around its vertical axis, but that's just because it's on a free-fall geodesic, i.e. there is no friction slowing down its rotation. So it'll spin endlessly until it eventually burns up in the atmosphere, which lies still many, many years ahead in the future.

None of it seems real to me. There was no identifying area visible on earth, the car was exposed without a rooftop, it sometimes took only 55 seconds to pass the earth image and longer to pass the dark side, and the earth shape changed from time to time.

None of it seems real to me. There was no identifying area visible on earth, the car was exposed without a rooftop, it sometimes took only 55 seconds to pass the earth image and longer to pass the dark side, and the earth shape changed from time to time.

Well, I could make out Saudi Arabia earlier, and as for the car not having a rooftop, it's a roadster, so it's supposed to be open.

You also have to keep in mind that the position of the car in space changes. It's not drifting about stationary, because then it would be drawn back to Earth by gravity in no time. So that car is actually moving around the Earth with at the very least the speed of a satellite, and possibly even faster if its orbit is higher. And the movement of the car in orbit is why the light/dark balance changes, plus that the car is rotating.